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Review
. 2019 Sep 11;10(1):1-23.
doi: 10.1080/20476965.2019.1652547.

Clinical pathway modelling: a literature review

Affiliations
Review

Clinical pathway modelling: a literature review

Emma Aspland et al. Health Syst (Basingstoke). .

Abstract

Hospital information systems are increasingly used as part of decision support tools for planning at strategic, tactical and operational decision levels. Clinical pathways are an effective and efficient approach in standardising the progression of treatment, to support patient care and facilitate clinical decision making. This literature review proposes a taxonomy of problems related to clinical pathways and explores the intersection between Information Systems (IS), Operational Research (OR) and industrial engineering. A structured search identified 175 papers included in the taxonomy and analysed in this review. The findings suggest that future work should consider industrial engineering integrated with OR techniques, with an aim to improving the handling of multiple scopes within one model, while encouraging interaction between the disjoint care levels and with a more direct focus on patient outcomes. Achieving this would continue to bridge the gap between OR, IS and industrial engineering, for clinical pathways to aid decision support.

Keywords: Clinical pathways; information systems; literature review; operational research.

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Conflict of interest statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Diagram detailing the search process
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Frequency of publications over time
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Frequency of publications in JCR category
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Frequency of papers in each collection method
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Frequency of papers in each condition area
Figure 6.
Figure 6.
Frequency of papers in each care level
Figure 7.
Figure 7.
Frequency of multiple care levels
Figure 8.
Figure 8.
Cross analysis between condition area and care level
Figure 9.
Figure 9.
Frequency of papers by scope
Figure 10.
Figure 10.
Frequency of papers in each method
Figure 11.
Figure 11.
Frequency of papers applying two methods
Figure 12.
Figure 12.
Cross analysis between method and condition area
Figure 13.
Figure 13.
Graph of the interaction between mapping, modelling and improving the pathway
Figure 14.
Figure 14.
Cross analysis between method and investigation area
Figure 15.
Figure 15.
Frequency of papers considering outcome measure
Figure 16.
Figure 16.
Frequency of interaction of multiple outcomes
Figure 17.
Figure 17.
Frequency of interaction between outcome and method
Figure 18.
Figure 18.
Frequency of interaction between outcome and scope
Figure 19.
Figure 19.
Frequency of papers considering decision level
Figure 20.
Figure 20.
Frequency of interaction between decision level and JCR category
Figure 21.
Figure 21.
Frequency of interaction between decision level and scope
Figure 22.
Figure 22.
Frequency of interaction between decision level and method
Figure 23.
Figure 23.
Frequency of interaction between decision level and outcome

References

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